Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and lameness.  He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of heaven.  It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love.

Ares (Roman Mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless, and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving orders from Apollo and Athene.

Hermes (Roman Mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and of course was full of tricks and thievery,—­the Olympian man of business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest.  He was also the god of eloquence.

Besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the most important of whom was Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, and hence the Queen of Heaven.  She exercised her husband’s prerogatives, and thundered and shook Olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous, unscrupulous, and cruel,—­a poor model for women to imitate.  The Greek poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence represent this deity without those elements of character which we most admire in woman,—­gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience.  She scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to be reconciled with our notions of dignity.  The Roman Juno, before the identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and its expenses.  She was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women were forbidden to touch her altars.

Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom.  She even expostulated with Zeus himself when he was wrong.  But on the other hand she had few attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses.

Artemis (Roman Diana) was “a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her brother Apollo.”  She presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which the Greeks delighted,—­a masculine female who took but little interest in anything intellectual.

Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and erring in the nature of woman,—­the goddess of sensual desire, of mere physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral point of view, and mentally contemptible.  This goddess was represented as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet revolting, admired and yet corrupting.  She was not of much importance among the Romans,—­who were far from being sentimental or passionate,—­until the growth of the legend of their Trojan origin.  Then, as mother of Aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and the Greek poets furnished her character.